Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’ Draws 6.7 Million Viewers

5 sources covered this compare →

Coverage diverges significantly in tone and focus. The New York Post criticized the finale as unmemorable and lacking emotional depth, emphasizing a negative assessment of Colbert's tenure. In contrast, outlets like The New York Times, The…

May 22, 2026 · 8:40 PM UTC · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 45 views

via

NYT > Top Stories

The total tripled his usual audience this season. But it is only about half of what Jay Leno and David Letterman attracted for their final episodes.

How this story was covered

5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 3 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 3 lean left, 1 right.

Lean left · 3Right · 1

▪ Stephen Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’ Draws Most Weeknight Viewers of His Tenure — The Hollywood Reporter
▪ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Finale Attracts 6.74 Million Viewers, Its Most-Watched Weeknight Episode Of All Time — Variety
▪ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Ends Its Run With Most-Watched Weeknight Episode Ever — Deadline
▪ Stephen Colbert’s final ‘Late Show’ wasn’t funny or emotional at all — just like his last 11 years — New York Post

About this source

NYT — Home files mainly under news. We currently carry 1,571 of its stories.

All NYT — Home coverage →

Original article

NYT > Top Stories

Read full at NYT > Top Stories →

Story provenance

Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record

inspect →

Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.

Record

Original publisher	NYT > Top Stories
Canonical URL	https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/business/media/colbert-late-show-ratings-finale.html
Publication time	Fri, 22 May 2026 20:40:35 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-05-22T20:17:02.930Z
Last seen	2026-05-22T20:55:03.184Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher description
Excerpt method	Publisher-supplied description / RSS summary field.
Summary	None yet
Summary source text	description
Citation coverage	No WeSearch summary has been generated for this story yet.
Cluster	TmNCnKurx8ei · 5 stories
Cluster logic	Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

Rights status (four layers)

Publisher-declared

No publisher-confirmed rights record for this source yet.

Machine-readable

No source-specific machine-readable restriction detected beyond the public feed.

WeSearch interpretation

WeSearch declared handling (basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed). This is WeSearch policy, not a legal grant on the publisher's behalf.

Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Anonymous · no account needed

Discussion

0 comments